


The Finder

by Tyranno



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: The Obscurial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 10:23:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8663944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyranno/pseuds/Tyranno
Summary: In the darkening planes of north-eastern Africa, on the black ground where even the desert dogs won't go, a man was writing. His only company was a pile of bleached white bones, a twisting mass of clouds and the stretching, endless sky.





	

In the darkening planes of north-eastern Africa, on the black ground where even the desert dogs won't go, a man was writing. His only company was a pile of bleached white bones, a twisting mass of clouds and the stretching, endless sky.

_An Obscurial_

Newt's pen stilled on the page. Ink bloomed out of the tip of his quill, soaking into the paper. Months in the desert had withered the quill's feathers until they were sparse and brittle. It was almost quiet enough to hear them rustle in the breeze.

_An Obscurial is a parasitic magical_

Newt crossed out the start of the sentence with a shaky line and tried to remember to breathe. He kept his eyes away from the bleached bones, and instead watched the twisting mass of clouds. Separated from the body, the Obscurial seemed listless. He had trapped it in a floating prism, and it seemed to have lost all its destructive energy, twisting and turning in on itself. The prism spell was one his brother had invented, on one of the few field trips he'd been convinced to come on. It must have been a decade, now. It was a variation on the shield charm—it kept a beast contained, but unharmed.

It was becoming too dark to write, he decided, watching the quickly gathering dusk. The locals had warned him about this—the night fell so quickly out here, in half an hour a blazing day had become dead night.

The wind sounded low and powerful, like the rising of one enormous wave. It rose, picking up clumps of sand and dried grass, bobbing the trapped Obscurial, like a heightening whisper that brushed audible—and then, suddenly, it dropped, and silence fell like a thick blanket across the dusk.

“ _Lumos_ ,” Newt whispered.

In the white light, the Obscurial looked like a dementor's cloak, except more organic. Where the dementor's cloaks were fabric the Obscurial was twisted and contracting, the texture of a wasp nest or a terrible burn. He watched it float inside the prism, thin, spiny tendrils growing and shrinking as the great dense mass of it shifted incessantly. He had planned to destroy it, but hadn't yet worked up the nerve.

Newt exhaled carefully. He glanced at the bones, already half buried by the wind. In the gloom they could be animal bones, picked clean by vultures. He looked away, breathing heavily.

He stood up quickly, sand shaking off his trousers. He looked at the Obscurial, moving endlessly, not even touching the edge of the prism. The last evidence of that poor child's magic.

Newt Scamander flicked his wand, and began to walk down the slope, trailed by the bobbing prism. “Come on now,” He said, voice rough to his own ears. He kicked open his suitcase and stepped inside. “Let's go.”


End file.
